“Sometimes of course I have failed. Tippi Hedren did not have the volcano”. — Alfred Hitchcock quoted on 5.28.66 by the El Paso Herald-Post, and re-quoted on page 649 of Patrick McGilligan‘s “Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light.”
There’s an old saying that goes “never trust the artist — trust the tale.” I can imagine Marnie defenders using this to justify their belief that Hitchcock made a better film than even he himself realized. But that’s a stretch, I think. When an esteemed director who was entirely candid with Francois Truffaut about every film in his storied career turns around and says “this movie didn’t work because the lead actress wasn’t sexy enough,” it’s hard to call him deluded. Failure is never easy to admit to but Hitchcock, to his credit, did so.
The quote is even more fascinating when you consider that it was Hitchcock and not Hedren who “had the volcano” (i.e., was burning with sexual current) during the filming of Marnie and, I’m sure, during the filming of The Birds. This feeds into my theory (posted in a piece that appeared on 4.16.15) about why Marnie feels fake, flat and strained. It was, I supposed, because Hitchcock “was emotionally off-balance, torn between his secretive lust and his often dazzling directorial technique, when he shot it. I’m sure he thought he knew what he was doing when he made Marnie, but deep down I don’t think he knew which end was up. The much-written-about fact that he was invested with ‘having’ Hedren means that he must have felt enraged and probably disoriented when he realized his efforts wouldn’t come to anything.”
